This week, Paul McLean, founder and executive director of the Virginia Minority Cannabis Coalition, discusses his efforts to empower black and brown communities to become cannabis shareholders while educating politicians who still believe the plant is nothing more than the "devil's hay."

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Cullen Raichart, founder and CEO of GreenBroz, joins the podcast to discuss the equipment manufacturer's move to Vegas and his efforts to clean up shop operationally without sacrificing company culture.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Charles Pyfrom, CMO with CannGen Insurance Services, joins the podcast to discuss how his company insures the livelihoods of cannabis operators. 

Fire damage, theft and even repetitive injuries, cannabis operators face many risks, and industry-specific insurance presents an opportunity to protect companies from unforeseen events.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Jason Reposa, Founder and CEO of Good Feels, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss why he built a bottling machine in his basement after getting laid off.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Jeff Luciano, CEO of High End Group and High End Multi Processing, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to talk about how he rallied a community to open its doors to cannabis after the village board banned dispensaries.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

In July 2018, Thomas Winstanley joined Theory Wellness. The company was medical-use only at the time with a pair of stores, but Winstanley wanted to work for a small, independent operation that was still cutting its teeth. It has been a fast and sometimes challenging four years.

The company has evolved a lot since Winstanley came onboard.

As Theory moved into recreational sales, its store in Great Barrington, MA, was just the sixth recreational dispensary on the east coast and the closest to New York City. The company transformed overnight and has been playing catchup ever since.

Initially, Winstanley and the rest of the Theory team had their apprehensions as the store approached its opening. What if nobody showed up? The store became an overnight sensation.

Now, Theory operates six stores, three medical in Massachusetts, two recreational in the state, and three recreational dispensaries in Maine – some of the stores are co-located. And the company has plans to continue to grow.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Brandon Bahr, co-founder and CEO of Simple Solvents joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcasts to discuss his evolution to a supplier of premium solvents for botanical extraction.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Ginger Sloan, founder of Zliderz, discusses how she came to believe in cannabis when it helped her mother kick the narcotics she had been taking for 30 years. Now, she sees big opportunities on the horizon.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Narbé Alexandrian, president and CEO of RIV Capital, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss his move from venture capital in the tech industry to the head of a cannabis investment and acquisition firm that recently made a strategic shift to the U.S. market.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, David Kessler, Chief Science Officer of Agrify discusses how intentional production will solve one of cannabis producers’ biggest challenges: making a consistent product.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Steve Gutterman, CEO of Falcon Brands, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss life at the helm of California's largest cannabis company.

Steve Gutterman spent most of his career in financial services, but the cannabis industry enticed him because it was the first industry that reminded him of the early days of online financial services. Although he says cannabis is no different from any other industry, you have to run a good business to be successful.

To remain California's largest cannabis company, Gutterman says Falcon Brands blends an "authentic OG street cred" with world-class professionalism. The company consists of professionals from Pepsi, Coke, Ford, E-Trade and Black & Decker, as well as industry pioneers. He says it combines precision and professionalism with a passion, and it's proven to be a good pairing.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Haitham Al-Beik, CEO and Founder of Wings, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss his efforts to remove the biggest pain points in cannabis retail with automation. 

Editor’s note: While we have continued to do the podcast weekly, it has jumped around a bit as we have scaled up our newsletter. Next week, it will return to its traditional slot on Thursdays. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for continuing to support the podcast. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

This week, Milan Patel, co-founder and CEO of PathogenDx, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss high-speed cannabis testing. How it works, who uses it, and what (if anything) it misses. 

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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This week, Mikhail Sagal and Gary Arnold, co-founders of TSRgrow, discuss how they engineer, design and manufacture LED lighting solutions for thousands of operators in the industry. 

According to Gary Arnold, TSRgrow doesn't just sell lighting, but a total grow solution, which also happens to be the name of the company's product (TOTALgrow Solution™). The company isn't looking for customers but partners in cannabis. They start each relationship by looking at the grower's business plan, figuring out what they plan to produce, how they plan to produce it, and ensuring that the company is grounded properly to achieve those goals. Without the proper preparation, operators can make many costly mistakes real quick.

The Total Grow Solution is a platform that combines LED lighting, distributed lighting power, environmental control and monitoring systems, and grow management software. According to Sagal, it's a digital platform that gives operators absolute control. He calls it Lighting as a Platform (LaaP). 

Sagal has a history in thermal and mechanical product design and engineering. He started the company 13 years ago specifically to get into LED lighting product design and development. Arnold joined the company a year later to help develop a new gold standard in cannabis industry lighting. 

Networked lighting enables remote or onsite monitoring, which helps TSRgrow maintain a close relationship with clients and stay involved with the configuration. They strive to give cannabis operators a guide to what they should be doing to succeed. They say the industry still has a glaring knowledge gap, but they can help improve consistency, yield and efficiency. 

This industry will get more competitive, and Arnold says the businesses that will win will have a plan that can change and adapt. Costs will go up, prices of the product will come down, and that will make or break customers going forward. Survival is based on your company's ability to control costs, maximize yield and continue to grow with expansion. 

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

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Dan Horowitz had been in the packaging business for eight years when he wanted a change. He was looking for something new when a recruiter asked, "Have you ever thought about cannabis?"

He met with Schutte Hammermill, a company with a more than 90-year legacy making milling and shredding equipment, and decided to come aboard as the sales manager for the company's new cannabis division, KannaMill.

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This week, Brandon Barksdale, CEO of Dalwhinnie Farms, discusses his transformation from finance to leading a premium cannabis company focused on growing the cleanest product in the market.

Brandon Barksdale wants to increase operational excellence and maturity in the cannabis industry.

The new CEO of Dalwhinnie Farms has spent time improving operations in various markets, from retail to manufacturing and technology, and he wants to bring best practices from each into the cannabis industry.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week on the Cannabis Equipment News podcast, Kenny Morrison, founder of VCC Brands, discusses how he was pulled out of a basement grow and into the nascent California cannabis industry, where he helped lead one of the first five dispensaries in Los Angeles County.

Kenny Morrison is a risk-taker. In 2006, he was working with friends growing cannabis in a basement when he decided to try his hand in the upstart California retail market. Morrison landed a partnership helping the Farmacy in West Hollywood expand after hitting it off with the owner. It wasn't an easy ride; the store was raided during his first year. 

He learned many things at the Farmacy, but perhaps the most important was that he wasn't cut out for retail. So in 2008, he founded Venice Cookie Company, driven to create tasty, safe and wellness-oriented products.

When Morrison first jumped into product manufacturing, he enlisted a cousin who was a pastry chef. He asked her to manufacture his first three products — all cookies — in her kitchen. Manufacturing products at that time was challenging; for example, cannabis product testing wasn't yet a reality, so Morrison couldn't guarantee the products' potency within a 10% variance (he says between 20%-25% was more doable). Inaccurate dosing wasn't a big problem in those days. Morrison recalls thinking that you could put cannabis in pretty much anything and it would sell. Most of his products ranged between 60 mg and 180 mg of THC. Once, in 2010, he tried a 6 mg product, and it was laughed off the shelf. It was a little ahead of its time. 

As Venice Cookie Company evolved, Morrison branched into new product categories, including tea (Subtle Tea), chocolate (4.20 Bar), tinctures (ONE tincture) and beverages (Cannabis Quencher (CQ)). The company became much more than cookies, so Morrison rebranded as VCC Brands. 

For a time, VCC operated a kitchen to manufacture its products. It ran from 4 p.m. through the night in an effort to work while the health department was closed. Eventually, Morrison sold the facility and pivoted to third-party manufacturers. Although his co-packing partners sometimes struggle to get the product right, things are looking up.

Morrison says he is all-in on the beverage market. With CQ as a company cornerstone, VCC has continued to expand and license products into other markets, including a low-dose beverage soon to debut in Massachusetts.

Morrison is a man of many passions. He's a surfer, jiu-jitsu practitioner, and he's held jobs as an actor, documentarian and music video director. While he may not have been cut out for retail, his brands are poised to leave a lasting legacy in the cannabis industry.

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This week, Terry Van Gelder, president at AGT Technologies, discusses why, after more than 40 years in the construction industry, he turned his attention to hybrid greenhouses for the cannabis industry. 

Van Gelder's hybrid greenhouses have a dual membrane system; essentially, it's a building inside a building insulated by a constant flow of hot air. In 2019, the innovative design received an Edison Award for energy and sustainability. 

Van Gelder uses a commercial building system rather than traditional greenhouse framing. He says it gives cannabis operators the ability to build indoor grow facilities of any size, in any location without traditional greenhouse limitations. For example, the sealed, cleanroom laboratory environment guarantees the purity and safety of crops. The buildings are also stronger to better stand up to the elements. 

The buildings have some interesting features, like oil bath fans that eliminate airborne contaminants, a reflective coating to amplify natural daylight and the ability to mimic other climates. It sounds ambitious, but Van Gelder has come up with a way to replicate climates from anywhere around the world. 

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Paulo Sobral, a consultant at Drink Cannabis LLC, discusses why he left Pepsi in 2014 to join an upstart cannabis industry.

Sobral is a "cannabis beverage fanatic" focused on helping develop and market innovative products that change the way people consume cannabis. While Sobral was at the Hall of Flowers event in Palm Springs, California, he stepped away from the show to talk about why he left Pepsi's corporate environment and jumped into an industry he found more inspiring. 

His interest in cannabis beverages started in 2016 when he first tried Cannabis Quencher, which turned out to be his favorite. However, some of the 100 mg drinks available seven years ago were non-homogenous, with sediment at the bottom, oil at the top and they had a tasty roulette-style experience. Coming from Pepsi, he realized the industry needed more consistency to build a sustainable brand. 

Sobral believes cannabis beverages will be the largest consumer segment in the industry. They are more sessionable, which means more units are consumed. Plus, everybody drinks liquid, he says. The biggest problem right now is that the industry doesn't have enough people narrowly focused on the category. 

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, James Eaves, Ph.D, director of indoor agriculture at VoltServer, discusses what he calls the first innovation to electricity since the current wars between Tesla and Edison.

VoltServer produces equipment and software that drastically reduces the cost, danger and time associated with installing and maintaining power systems. They call it "Digital Electricity™."

Digital Electricity™ offers the characteristics of high-power electricity but uses the same wiring and installation methods as low-power electricity. Eaves describes the technology as high-power electricity that you can touch.

Challenging a 150-year-old institution can be difficult, and the company has received a heated response from the market as it threatens the status quo. Although the cannabis industry tends to be more open to new ideas, many stakeholders remain in disbelief. 

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at david(at)cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Mark Doherty, partner at Doherty Agriculture and advisor to Dual Draft Integrated Airflow discusses what he's encountered in more than 10 years in the controlled environment agriculture market.

He built his first commercial indoor farm in 2010 and made every mistake imaginable, but he learned a lot. Since then, the market has changed drastically.

Now, he works with Dual Draft to solve some of the traditional problems with racking systems in the cannabis industry, like water pooling and airflow consistency.

Dual Draft’s proprietary technology provides consistent airflow which eliminates micro climates and ensures consistent growing conditions. He says it's the only product that offers under-canopy airflow.

The product recently debuted and received an incredible response at MJBizCon 2021.

This week, Wes Reynolds, President and CEO, Green Mill Supercritical discusses his transition from a 20-year Coca-Cola vet to the head of Green Mill Supercritical, a company that specializes in CO2 extraction.

Reynolds discusses why his company is fully invested in CO2 extraction and how, by the end of 2022, ethanol-free CO2 extraction stands to become the standard for all others to meet.

Green Mill recently released its outlook for the extraction industry in 2022 and while the industry has shown promise, it wasn't without its disappointment. For example, some companies make exaggerated product claims, and they may be in for a reckoning next year.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out a lot by giving the podcast a positive review. Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.

This week, Mitch Galton, Director of Business Development at urban-gro, discusses why he left college early to start a career in cannabis.

Galton's new cannabis path commenced in LED lighting with Fluence, but has since graduated into a role that has him working closer to the plant at urban-gro, a company that specializes in architectural, engineering and cultivation systems integration for commercial cannabis and controlled environment food facilities.

Urban-gro has worked on more than 450 indoor cultivation projects that have ranged from 10,000 square feet to 1.8 million square feet. Galton takes us through the process of building an indoor cultivation facility, including how to increase canopy while reducing energy consumption.

While Galton says that every client is different, urban-gro can work with any budget to make it happen. Galton says building a cultivation facility is a lot like building a car, most people want a Ferrari, but what they need (or can afford) is a Camry. Sticking with the car metaphor, building a cannabis facility is a lot like buying a car, after you determine your budget, you have to choose which features are most aligned with your goals.

Urban-gro is having a big year, experiencing some 119% growth year-over-year in the third quarter. The company recently announced an exclusive contract outside of the cannabis industry with Urban Health Farms to design and build approximately 20 turn-key, food-focused vertical farms throughout Europe. 

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This week, Luke Costello discusses why Mach Technologies entered the cannabis business after noticing some glaring gaps in equipment and innovation.

Mach Technologies has been making highly automated equipment for more than 80 years. The company's experience ranges from the automotive to pharmaceutical industries.

Three years ago, the company looked at the cannabis industry and noticed some gaps in the equipment and support. For example, they saw companies using equipment designed for garages being used on a commercial scale. 

At the beginning of the industry, margins were good, and efficiency wasn't a priority, but as margins became tighter, companies started turning to automation. Mach wanted to seize on the lack of innovation and automation and help companies produce a more affordable and consistent end product using the company's state-of-the-art automated extraction equipment.

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This week, Christian Hageseth, chief operating officer of VIST Labs, discusses how a game of golf permanently changed the trajectory of his career. 

In 2009, Hageseth was an out-of-work real estate finance professional who was a casualty of the economic crisis in 2008. He was invited to play a round of golf where he met an individual opening a dispensary in the up-and-coming Colorado cannabis industry. 

Hageseth started in the cannabis industry in July 2009, about six weeks before business took off in Colorado following rules that opened up the medical market. He got a little lucky with the timing, but he had his first plant in the ground by September 2009, and he has been growing and selling legal weed ever since. 

While he has founded many companies in the industry and even authored a book, Big Weed, Hageseth's latest venture, VIST Labs, is his effort to clean up the cannabis industry's dirty secrets. Hageseth wants to deliver clean cannabis to the consumer with a process that makes the product much more shelf-stable. The tech means a safer product for consumers while remaining a boon for cannabis cultivators sitting on a surplus -- as well as those looking to market a more pure product. 

VIST's patent-pending CryoPasteurization decontamination technology kills mold, yeast and bacteria while preserving terpene and cannabinoid levels. 

The company also created AMAPS, an aseptic modified atmosphere packaging system that protects and extends product freshness. 

VIST has a fleet of mobile labs that travel to facilities to provide microbial screening to identify the level of contaminants in flower or shake and treat the affected product. 

When Hageseth got into the cannabis industry, he says it was made up of a bunch of cowboys, yahoos and crazies (he was a cowboy that was a little bit crazy), but as the business has evolved, his entrepreneurial spirit drove him to help make it a bit safer for consumers and businesses alike.

Please make sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You could also help us out a lot by giving the podcast a positive review . Finally, to email the podcast or suggest a potential guest, you can reach David Mantey at David @cannabisequipmentnews.com.